


Fingers Worn from the Disease

by vyatka



Series: Eyes Black like an Animal [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Codependency, Ear Piercings, Gen, Guilt, Original Character Death(s), POV Helena, Unhealthy Relationships, Violence, have yall caught on to me using nothing but chelsea wolfe lyrics for my titles yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-26
Updated: 2018-02-26
Packaged: 2019-03-24 09:31:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13808409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vyatka/pseuds/vyatka
Summary: Perhaps that is how Helena should think of this. A crucifixion. Now she can belong to Sarah the way she should. Maybe the holes will cleanse her like Christ and nothing Tomas did will ever hurt her again, may a goat piss on his grave that never was.





	Fingers Worn from the Disease

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings for season one Sarah/Helena dynamics. Slightly incestuous, very gruesome, if you're here you probably know what to expect. This series is based on [Muzzle](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7378897/) by piggy09.

The Neo rips the earring from Helena's ear, screaming against the press of her strong pale hand over his mouth. Helena yelps (it had  _hurt_ ) and twists his nose with her other hand until she hears the snap of cartilage. Nose-bone that is not actually bone. More like a little yellow twig. 

He bites her hand. She yowls, feeling the flesh on her fingers come off between his teeth, and tightens her arm around his throat.

"Sleep," she commands. "DIE." 

Below her, his arms flail around like something with many limbs. Helena has seen pictures of octopuses with all their arm-legs waving in the water. The Neo is like that, although he's becoming weaker, going to sleep. He can't die. She accidentally told him to. If he listens and dies before Sarah gets here, she'll crush his bones under her feet. And Sarah will be cold and angry and probably call Helena stupid. She'll probably already call Helena stupid for not taking her earrings out, which she would have done if Sarah hadn't said to leave them in or the holes would close. 

The holes won't ever close. Not on this side. There's too much air passing through the bottom of her ear. The Neo didn't pull her earring  _out,_ he ripped it down through the soft skin and ruined the hole. 

He still has her earring in his dirty Neo fist. 

But it is not hers, Helena remembers. A cool nighttime wind picks up her hair and moves it over the no-longer-a-hole. It's Sarah's. 

 ***

"I am thinking this will hurt," Helena said the day before.

Sarah looks down at her little weapon, instead of at Helena, who is a better weapon. "It's like a pinch," she says. "S did it for me when I was younger than you. Don't be a baby." 

Helena is a woman, not a baby, and if Sarah wants her to have holes in her ears, she will do it. Holes. The Lamb of God had holes as well, through his hands and feet. Perhaps that is how Helena should think of this. A crucifixion. Now she can belong to Sarah the way she should. Maybe the holes will cleanse her like Christ and nothing Tomas did will ever hurt her again, may a goat piss on his grave that never was. He'll rot in the cage. In hell, the demons will lash the flesh from his legs the way he swore so many times he would do to Helena if she would not serve - 

"How come you never got this done as a kid, anyway? They don't have Claire's in Ukraine?" 

"We do not wear jewelry in convent. And Tomas says jewels are vanity, and vanity is - " 

"A sin, got it. Well, fuck Tomas and fuck the convent." 

"Yes," echoes Helena. Her lips press together. "Fuck these." 

It feels like Sarah promised - a pinch, a nun's fingernails. After, her ears burn like heat stroke, and Sarah threads tiny golden hoops through. 

It feels only a little like crucifixion.

"Keep them clean," Sarah is telling her. "Don't need to deal with your bloody ears gettin' infected, yeah? And keep them in. The holes will close up if you don't." 

 ***

Now, Helena drags the Neo and herself into the car, rolling the little gold hoop between her fingers. She keeps it in her palm, flat against the cold wheel while she drives. Her ear burns hot as heat stroke once again, except this time it doesn't feel like crucifixion. She is angry. Her ear-holes were Sarah's gift, a special gift, sister-gift. 

"God damn it, Helena," Helena says in Sarah's voice. She slams the van door  _bang_ and circles to pull the Neo from the trunk. 

No more gifts. Not for Helena, who lets Neos rip her ear in half. Helena should rip the Neo's ear in half. He cut some of his fingers off and replaced the ends with silver talons, so it is possible he would like that. 

And no more food. Helena's stomach howls. Sarah feeds her more than Tomas ever did, almost every two or three days, and she can have water almost whenever she wants. She's still so hungry. Her stomach is always wanting and begging and crying. Like the Neo is when she opens the trunk, shushes him with a warning knife, and marches him into the house. Not house. Helena fumbles for the word.  _Shack._ It's a tiny little house fringed by woods and far enough from the city of Washington D.C. that no one will hear if the Neo screams. 

"No screaming," she says anyway. "You need shitting or pissing?" 

He shakes his head. His one white eye gleams, but the brown one is full of tears, ready to spill. 

"You're Manning's Mad Dog," he says. "The Ukrainian." 

"Mm. Sit." When he doesn't, she clicks her gun in his face and he jerks, whimpering. The tears spill. But he sits, gingerly on the moldy carpet. "If you run, I shoot you in the back. It's slow to die from this. You do not want it, I promise." 

Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. When she arrives, what will she say? She may not even look at Helena, may just motion for Helena to stand behind her while she asks the questions, and give Helena the order to kill him. Or she may sit. Sarah's leg still hurts her, Helena can tell. 

If she cut off Sarah's leg for her, the bullet would stop hurting. She could get a new one, like a Neo. The tail-man in Toronto grew a tail, Sarah should be able to grow a leg. IF Helena cut off Sarah's leg as a surprise - 

"Bad surprise," says Pupok on her shoulder. 

The corner of her mouth turns up, then lowers. "Insect. I don't need you now." 

"What?" says the Neo. 

"Be quiet," Helena and Pupok say together. When she turns her head to keep talking to Pupok, he's gone. Too bad. 

The Neo talks. (As Neos do. The only good Neo is a quiet, dead one.) "What's your name? Yelena?" 

"Helena." Her poor, poor ear. She fingers it. "Goddammit, Helena," she says again. Sarah has lots of ways to say it.  _God_ dammit, Helena, and God _damn_ it, Helena, and goddammithelena. God damns frequently for Sarah. 

"What?" 

She spits. Sarah will be here soon. 

"I'm sorry about your earring." 

He is politer than most dirty Neos, at least. Helena eyes him. "You should be. It was gift from my сестра." 

"Sarah Manning." 

Helena is not shocked that he knows her. In the beginning, none of them did. Now they are getting harder to hunt. They know Helena as Sarah's. They have many names for her: angel, white whale, mad dog, shark. Собака, in Russia and Ukraine, and жовтий ангелий. Yellow angel. 

Sarah has names, too. 

"Don't say her name," says Helena, knife in hand, gun in hand. "She is not yours." 

"Sorry," he says. 

His tongue is forked. She can see it, the prongs, wet, pink, and nervous. 

"You have the devil's tongue. How?" 

"Surgical bifurcation." 

That's just a noise. Helena stares, then snorts, shivering. "Devil." 

_(Helena, you devil.)_

"I can fix your ear," he says. 

"If I had needle, I could fix it and then make your eyes go pop." The white eyes do pop the same as the natural ones. 

Helena imagines Sarah pulling her hair back to scream in her face. Sarah doesn't do that. Tomas did. 

"I can fix it without a needle." 

He cannot. "You cannot." 

"I can," insists the Neo. "You don't want Sarah to know that you lost her earring." 

He is so little, so far beneath her and Sarah. Like Tomas once said - fingernail clippings. Even less. The dirt under her nails. (There is a lot. Helena doesn't wash her hands. Why? They only get dirty.) And yet Helena considers. Sarah's gift is Sarah's gift. She holds the earring, still. Small and gold and warm from her sweat. 

"Okay," she says. Her coat sleeve slips down over part of her wrist, half-masking her gun. "If you try anything else, I pull out your eye. Understanding?" 

She kneels on the carpet. Mold, but Helena has knelt at the bottom of wells. Mold on the knees is nothing. 

Helena should never have trusted a dirty Neo. 

"Crazy bitch" is what he says and try to run is what he does. Pulls her ear nearly off of her head, tumbles to his feet, runs for the door like a skinny flailing chicken with one white eye. 

Helena is no liar. 

She shoots him in the back and pulls the brown eye out with one finger, as slow and sweet as sin. He isn't finished dying when Sarah arrives, beautiful and cold.

"Goddammit, Helena." Sarah smacks her in the ear. Helena scurries away from the dying Neo. If her ear had stopped hurting, it hurts again. " _Goddammit."_

She has to clean up the body alone. 

Accidentally, she throws away the earring. 

**Author's Note:**

> I am not positive whether жовтий ангелий is the correct way to say 'yellow angel'. It's either that, or жовтий ангел.
> 
> [beth voice] my Ukrainian sucks 
> 
> Please comment/kudos if you enjoyed!


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